Saturday, 5 October 2013

Switching to 25mm Tyres

Today I had a fascinating discussion with Peter 'Spike' Taylor of ProTool Cycleworks. Former Head Mechanic of British Cycling about 25mm tyres and how these should now be considered the default tyre for British road cyclists.

Taylor, who was part of the marginal gains programme within British Cycling under Sir Dave Brailsford, is an absolute superbrain on anything technical relating to bikes. He used to build and maintain the bikes used by the top professionals and is part of the squad supporting the Rapha Condor JLT race team.

Visiting the ProTool Cycleworks centre in The Fell store in Whalley to have a cassette swapped on some wheels, I asked the guys to inspect the tyres I had following my spate of punctures.

Conclusion was that the rear tyre was worn and would benefit from a replacement, the guys went straight for a 25mm Continental GP4000S. It led to me asking Spike about tyres and I then recorded around 14 mins of a 20 minute explanation he gave me around tyre technology and why 25mm should be the default tyre size for road cyclists. It was an unplanned conversation with a hastily switched on phone, so ignore the background stuff.The explanation was technical, so simplifying this, the advantages are: -

Ride Comfort.

Better Puncture Resistance & Reliability.

Better aerodynamic profiling given the trend for wider rims (less air disruption)

Through the wonders of cloud technology, I captured most of our chat on my iPhone and have put it below for you to listen to unedited. You can find out more about ProTool Cycleworks here and you can follow them on Twitter here. Details on the ProTool service centre within the new Beacon store in Whalley, called The Fell_01 can be found here.